Legitimacy

The legitimacy of any system of power, including that of its individual power holders, lies in the degree to which it is acknowledged as rightful, both by those involved with and subject to it and by third parties whose support and recognition it may depend on. Although the definition of legitimacy as rightful power or authority is a widely agreed-on one, much else about the subject is strongly contested:

This entry treats these main points of disagreement in turn.

A useful starting point is to distinguish between a philosophical and a social-scientific approach to the study of legitimacy. Throughout human history, [Page 1415]those occupying positions of power, and especially political power, have sought to ground their authority in a principle of legitimacy, which shows why their access to, and exercise of, power is rightful and why those subject to it have a corresponding duty to obey. These claims have been elaborated by apologists in narrative form and by iconographers in pictorial and artistic representations. However, where the possession or exercise of power has been challenged or contested, critical reflection and argument about what makes power rightful has taken place. It has usually been the task of philosophers to elaborate such reflection into a considered theory or theories and to test legitimacy claims against accepted standards of normative validity and discursive argument. From at least the time of the ancient Greeks onward, the study of legitimacy has been central to the practice of political philosophy, through its analysis of normative principles of the right and the good.

The study of legitimacy as a subject for political science, by contrast, is comparatively recent, dating from the early 20th century. In contrast to political philosophy, its focus is more empirical than normative, more on processes and outcomes than on abstract principles. Its concern is less with the reasoned validity of legitimacy claims than with the degree of their recognition by the relevant social agents and with the consequences that follow from that recognition for the stability of a system of power or rule and for the manner in which it is organized. It was the German sociologist Max Weber who was first responsible for elaborating a social-scientific account of legitimacy and for exploring its significance for power relations in his work Economy and Society. Most of the key debates in political science since then have stemmed from Weber's work, and this entry will return to it at a number of points.